J.R. Briggs

Book Review: Missional Renaissance

March 25, 2009

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The good people at Jossey-Bass caught wind that I was interested in reading Reggie McNeal’s new book Missional Renaissance and sent me a free copy in the mail a few weeks ago. Missional is such a buzzword these days that it almost seems fad-ish. As Reggie joked in an interview recently, “If you want to sell books just put missional in the title and see what happens…”

My brother highly recommended this book to me so I did have some expectation, but I wondered if it might be a bit of a flash in the pan. However, it exceeded my expectations. Jossey-Bass, partnering with the Leadership Network, published another great book by McNeal. I’ve got to tell you: I have yet to read a bad book by Jossey-Bass – or by Reggie McNeal.

Several years ago I attended a church leaders’ conference in Colorado Springs sponsored by Fuller Seminary that featured Reggie McNeal. The conference was held at a high end brewery (the only Pastors’/Christian Leaders’ conference I’ve attended in a brewery, for sure) and it was fantastic. McNeal is wise and very sharp guy. To be honest, this book had a lot of ideas in it I was already fairly familiar with, but he gave me a few metaphors and mental coathangers on which to hang some of the clothes that have been lying in a pile on the floor. He’s given me some new language and some new ways of organizing some of the thoughts of missional concepts and shifts. There were three specific insights that stuck out to me the most.

Helpful insight # 1: Three shifts

McNeal focuses the entire book around three missional shifts. He speaks first in theory, then he gives engaging stories of what that looks like and practical ways to make the shift. The three areas are:

-from internal to external in terms of ministry focus

-from program development to people development in terms of core activity

-from church-based to kingdom-based in terms of leadership agenda

Helpful insight # 2: From Destination to Connector

I think in terms of pictures and metaphors and Reggie gives a fantastic one toward the beginning of the book. He writes about the church in terms of flying:

“On a fairly routine basis, airports get confused about what they are there for – and for whom. They think that if a bunch of planes are on the ground, close to the hub, and the concourse is full of people, they are winning. They apparently think they are the destination. Of course, when this happens, it means a bunch of people aren’t getting where they want to go…

“The airport is a place of connection, not a destination. Its job is to help people get somewhere else. An airport-centric world of travel would be dull and frustrating, no matter how nice the airport is. When the church thinks it’s the destination [i.e. just get people to come to church] it also confuses the scorecard. It thinks that if people are hovering around and in the church, the church is winning. The truth is, when that’s the case, the church is really keeping people from where they want to go, from their real destination… The church is the connector, linking people to the kingdom life that God has for them. Substituting church activity as the preferred life expression is as weird as believing that airports are more interesting than the destinations they serve” (45).

What an unbelievably helpful metaphor for me – and for every church that intends to be a sending church…

Helpful insight #3: The Scorecard

This is the most important element in the book – and why I believe that every church leader that desires to take cultural engagement seriously should read it. He uses the mantra “what gets rewarded gets done.” While many missional and/or emerging churches often claim “we really don’t care about numbers,” Reggie states that we should care about numbers. The problem is that we have cared way too much for way too long about the wrong types of numbers (attendance on Sunday, square footage of our buildings and dollar amount). He writes in the introduction:

“The typical church scorecard (how many, how often, how much) doesn’t mesh with the missional view of what the church should be monitoring in light of its mission in the world. The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in without any reference to the church’s impact beyond itself” (xvii).

The concept of changing the scorecard (i.e. redefining how we view success in our churches) was worth the read alone. Instead of embracing the “numbers don’t matter to us” approach, his encouragement to embrace different sets of numbers rang true with me. Instead of measuring the ABC’s of modern church success (Attendance, Bodies and Cash), he challenges readers to embrace different metrices like:

-number of growing relationships with people who are not Jesus followers (or church attenders).

-number of personal relationships with other community leaders and influencers

-number of venues for intentional personal service in the community

-number of hours of personal service in the community each month

-number of mentoring relationships

-number of stories of external, missional experiences used and referenced

And then he suggests that our Sunday gatherings should be little more than celebrating the work of God in the past six days and allowing space to tell some of those stories of where we’ve seen God at work and how we joined him in it.Check out another review of this book done by Aussie/Anglican priest/church planter/friend Josh Dinale.

If you’ve read my blog enough you know that I recommend the book The Tangible Kingdom to church leaders and pastors everywhere (last week I finished reading it for the third time). So after you are done reading that book, pick up Reggie’s book. I’m already thinking of a few pastors and leaders I want to lend the book to next…

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